Caltech Humanities and Social Sciences News Releases

Caltech Senior Wins Gates Cambridge Scholarship

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 17:19:14 -0700

News Writer:

Kimm Fesenmaier

Catherine Bingchan Xie, a senior bioengineering major and English minor at Caltech, has been selected to receive a Gates Cambridge Scholarship, which will fund her graduate studies at the University of Cambridge for the next academic year. Xie, a Canadian citizen, is one of 51 new international recipients selected from a pool of more than 4,000 applicants based not only on intellectual ability, but also on leadership capacity and a commitment to improving the lives of others.

For Love or Money: Marriage and Economic Development in the Past

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 22:42:05 -0800

Watson Lecture Preview

News Writer:

Douglas Smith

Getting married and moving out of your parents' house may be key to your personal economic development, but are marriage patterns key to an entire society's development as well? Professor of Social Science History Tracy Dennison tells us what love's got to do with it at 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday, January 30, 2013, in Caltech's Beckman Auditorium. Admission is free.

TEDxCaltech: If You Click a Cookie with a Mouse

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 22:34:52 -0800

News Writer:

Marcus Woo

When offered spinach or a cookie, how do you decide which to eat? Do you go for the healthy choice or the tasty one? To study the science of decision making, researchers in the lab of Caltech neuroeconomist Antonio Rangel analyze what happens inside people's brains as they choose between various kinds of food. The researchers typically use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure the changes in oxygen flow through the brain; these changes serve as proxies for spikes or dips in brain activity. Recently, however, investigators have started using a new technique that may better tease out how you choose between the spinach or the cookie—a decision that's often made in a fraction of a second.

Reducing 20/20 Hindsight Bias

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 03:00:50 -0800

News Writer:

Marcus Woo

In a new study, recently published online in the journal Psychological Science, a team led by Colin Camerer and Shinsuke Shimojo not only found a way to predict the severity of the bias, but also identified a technique that successfully reduces it—a strategy that could help produce fairer assessments in situations such as medical malpractice suits and reviewing police or military actions.

Snap Judgments During Speed Dating

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 17:00:00 -0800

Caltech researchers identify two regions of the brain whose behavior predicts the outcome of speed dating

News Writer:

Marcus Woo

For speed daters, first impressions are everything. But it's more than just being hot or not. Whether or not we like to admit it, we all may make snap judgments about a new face. Perhaps nowhere is this truer than in speed dating, during which people decide on someone's romantic potential in just a few seconds. How people make those decisions, however, is not well understood. But now, researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have found that people make such speed-dating decisions based on a combination of two different factors that are related to activity in two distinct parts of the brain.

Literature in the Middle Ages: An Interview with Jennifer Jahner

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 21:33:44 -0700

News Writer:

Marcus Woo

This fall, Jennifer Jahner joined Caltech as an assistant professor of English. As an undergraduate, she planned to study environmental science at Western Washington University. But as a lifelong reader, she couldn't elude the lure of literature, and she ended up majoring in English instead, receiving her BA in 1998. Afterward, she spent several years as a book editor before returning to academia as a graduate student at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where she took a seminar on medieval literature—a class that she says changed her life. Discovering a passion for the time period and for studying old, rare manuscripts, she got her MA in 2005 and then went to the University of Pennsylvania, where she received her PhD last spring. Jahner recently answered a few questions about her research and her thoughts on joining Caltech.

Technology Has Improved Voting Procedures

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 01:11:13 -0700

New report assesses voting procedures over the last decade

News Writer:

Marcus Woo

Thanks to better voting technology over the last decade, the country's election process has seen much improvement, according to a new report released today by researchers at Caltech and MIT. However, the report notes, despite this progress, some problems remain.

Handicapping the Election: An Interview with Erik Snowberg

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 17:26:42 -0700

News Writer:

Michael Rogers

Credit: Lance Hayashida

Erik Snowberg, a Caltech professor of economics and political science, is an expert on the relationship between economics and politics, a very relevant topic in recent history. With the U.S. presidential election just about a month away, Snowberg recently answered a few questions about the presidential race and what we can expect on November 6.

Columbus to D'Ailly: Are We There Yet?

Sat, 06 Oct 2012 00:29:12 -0700

News Writer:

Ann Motrunich

Christopher Columbus made a few mistakes in researching the route to Japan, his first intended destination on his famous 1492 voyage to the Indies. Among the worst: he ignored sound contemporary scholarship on the size of Earth, its continents, and its oceans in favor of estimates made by medieval theologian and cosmographer Pierre D'Ailly, who was born 101 years before Columbus. Why did Columbus put so much faith in D'Ailly? Perhaps because he stood to gain so much by it, claims Columbus expert and Caltech history professor Nicolás Wey-Gómez.

Matthew Elliott: Modeling Networks

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 16:33:32 -0700

News Writer:

Marcus Woo

Matthew Elliott is Caltech's newest assistant professor of economics. Born in England, he earned his BA and MPhil from Oxford in 2002 and 2004. After receiving his PhD from Stanford in 2011, he spent a year at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, before arriving in Pasadena this fall.

Ready for Your Close-Up?

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 16:06:24 -0700

Caltech study shows that the distance at which facial photos are taken influences perception

News Writer:

Katie Neith

As the saying goes, "A picture is worth a thousand words." For people in certain professions—acting, modeling, and even politics—this phrase rings particularly true. Previous studies have examined how our social judgments of pictures of people are influenced by factors such as whether the person is smiling or frowning, but until now one factor has never been investigated: the distance between the photographer and the subject. According to a new study by researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), this turns out to make a difference—close-up photo subjects, the study found, are judged to look less trustworthy, less competent, and less attractive.

Making the Healthy Choice

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 16:01:33 -0700

Caltech-led scientists find that competition between two brain regions influences the ability to make healthy choices

News Writer:

Marcus Woo

Almost everyone knows the feeling: you see a delicious piece of chocolate cake on the table, but as you grab your fork, you think twice. The cake is too fattening and unhealthy, you tell yourself. Maybe you should skip dessert. But the cake still beckons.

Caltech and Princeton University Press Release Thirteenth Volume of Einstein Papers

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 15:59:36 -0700

News Writer:

Kimm Fesenmaier

Einstein and his wife Elsa aboard the SS Kitano Maru en route to Japan, October 1922.

A new volume in the Einstein Papers Project is scheduled to be released on September 25. This volume covers a turbulent 15 months in the physicist's life and includes several hundred previously unpublished and unknown articles and letters, some of which express his desire for "a normal life."

NIMH Awards $9 Million Grant to Caltech Researchers

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 14:00:00 -0700

News Writer:

Brian Bell

The National Institute of Mental Health has awarded a five-year, $9 million grant to a research group Caltech to study the neurobiology of social decision making.

The grant establishes a Silvio O. Conte Center for Neuroscience Research, where researchers will use electrophysiology and functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate how humans make social decisions.

Thinking and Choosing in the Brain

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 14:00:00 -0700

Caltech researchers study over 300 lesion patients

News Writer:

Katie Neith

MRI scans of a human brain show the regions significantly associated with decision-making in blue, and the regions significantly associated with behavioral control in red. On the left is an intact brain seen from the front â€” the colored regions are both in the frontal lobes. The image on the right is that same brain with a portion of the frontal lobes cut away to show how the lesion map looks in the interior.

Credit: California Institute of Technology

The frontal lobes are the largest part of the human brain, and damage to this area can result in profound impairments in reasoning and decision making. To find out more about what different parts of the frontal lobes do, neuroscientists at Caltech teamed up with researchers at the world's largest registry of brain-lesion patients. By mapping the brain lesions of these patients, the team was able to show that reasoning and behavioral control are dependent on different regions of the lobes than the areas called upon when making a decision.

Forging Ahead

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 14:00:00 -0700

Recently graduated Caltech senior rekindles childhood passions

News Writer:

Marcus Woo

Tom Harris holds one of the swords that he made.

Credit: Marcus Woo

Tom Harris came to Caltech with an undeclared major, thinking he would study computer science. But, having been an avid Lego builder as a kid, he was drawn to mechanical engineering. He also has an interest in medieval history, which similarly dates back to his childhood—he loved pirates and knights, and both his parents were history majors—and after he took Brown's medieval history class, his impression of the study of history changed.

L.A. Times Shines Spotlight on HSS

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 14:00:00 -0700

News Writer:

Kimm Fesenmaier

Caltech's core curriculum is designed to prepare students for the interdisciplinary nature of contemporary research in science and technology and requires that they complete what amounts to a class each quarter in the Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS). The Los Angeles Times recently focused the spotlight on this aspect of the Caltech experience, featuring several of the division's students.

The Path Less Traveled

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 14:00:00 -0700

Senior uses Caltech as the stepping-stone for a global education

Writer:

Katie Neith

Senior Katie Brennan visits a chip stand on Lake Malawi during a volunteer trip to Africa.

Growing up, Katie Brennan didn't have a lot of opportunities to travel. So when she started her biology studies at Caltech, one of her main goals was to explore the world. Thanks to a plenitude of funding from the Institute, Brennan—a graduating senior—can now cross two more continents and the mountains of Washington State off her list.

Hands-On Research

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 02:00:00 -0700

Caltech Neuroscientists Show How Brain Responds to Sensual Caress

Writer:

Katie Neith

A nuzzle of the neck, a stroke of the wrist, a brush of the knee—these caresses often signal a loving touch, but can also feel highly aversive, depending on who is delivering the touch, and to whom. Interested in how the brain makes connections between touch and emotion, neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have discovered that the association begins in the brain's primary somatosensory cortex, a region that, until now, was thought only to respond to basic touch, not to its emotional quality.

Caltech Research Shows Medicare Auction Will Face Severe Difficulties

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 14:00:00 -0700

Writer:

Marcus Woo

Medicare's new method for buying medical supplies and equipment—everything from wheelchairs and hospital beds to insulin shots and oxygen tanks—is doomed to face severe difficulties, according to a new study by Caltech researchers.